EU big tech

The European Commission, which announced Thursday an inquiry into Microsoft's promotion of its Teams messaging app, has fought US tech giants on fronts from tax avoidance, disinformation and hate speech to data privacy and monopolistic practices.Here is a summary of the tussles between Silicon Valley and Brussels. - Stifling competition -The European Commission on Thursday said it would investigate whether Microsoft was "abusing and defending its market position" by bundling its Teams app with its Office suite. It comes…

A new auditing regime should make harder to give Meta, Google and Amazon an easy ride on data protection. It's well established that the European Union has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world, threatening fines of up to 4% of a company's annual turnover. A lesser-known fact, and one which large tech firms would like to keep quiet, is that the EU hasn't enforced those rules very strictly. Since introducing its landmark privacy law known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, the EU has…